Ars Notoria introduces its new literary chatbot

Perhaps “proud” is not the right word, but we at Ars Notoria might be proud (we think) to announce the introduction of an AI-generated Avatar designed to make us more money than the billionaires we despise. We’ve given it the title of “Satire and Humour Editor” because, well, everything else is taken and we couldn’t think of something better. And any intelligence associated with this Avatar is definitely artificial by its nature.

Named “James Wood” in an effort to attract the ire of lawyers acting for the American Actor, the Harvard literary critic, the English League Two footballer, a US General and a host of others with the same name, we’ve created one of those vanity writer sites beloved of try-hard wannabes desperate to convince people they aren’t, in fact, Content Managers for arms manufacturers and oil companies. Or some other meaningless job executed as they watch their lives drift away from them.

We’ve quietly infiltrated several literary websites and placed bogus stories generated by ChatGPT that might make you laugh, they’re so obviously unliterary. Even better, we’ve created a biography for our AI and given it a past – a past of wandering, of not-so-heroic failure, of misdeeds and too much coffee. Photos of some hapless dude with the same name launching a novel, or reading in the Poetry Library – we can do deepfakes with the best of them. 

“James” claims to be fighting against technocracy, the erosion of democracy and the stories governments tell to control us. But in reality, his sole purpose is to get us more readers. We’ve even added loads of links to this article to get people clicking around and improve our SEO rankings. Clicked on one yet? See? Gotcha!

#Hashtags will be next – just #watch. After that, we’ll start over-using “@” symbols as well to confuse people further. 

Keep an eye out for stories posted by our AI – aka James – including poems that might or might not be from other writers, interviews and more. 

But don’t believe a word it says, not unless you want to be duped and end up giving your money to some shadowy organisation behind which lurk fiends richer than Gates or Musk …

Happy reading – or is it?

(The Editors fade into the background with a sinister chuckle that would make Vincent Price (below) jealous…)